Orioles Continue Playing Small Ball, Sign Mychal Givens

Right-handed reliever Mychal Givens is returning to the Orioles. The deal is for one year and $3 million, with a mutual option for 2024 worth $6 million. If he declines the 2024 option, he receives a $1 million buyout. If he accepts and the Orioles decline their end, he receives a $2 million buyout. Baltimore’s 40-man roster is full, so the team will need to make a move to clear space for him.

Coming off a 2022 season in which he posted a 3.38 ERA and a 3.96 FIP over 61.1 innings, Givens provides some experience to a young Baltimore bullpen that features standouts like Dillon Tate, Cionel Pérez, and closer Félix Bautista. Baltimore’s relief corps was ninth in the league with a 3.49 ERA in 2022, with a 3.72 FIP and 3.53 SIERA that ranked seventh and 13th, respectively.

The Orioles selected Givens out of high school in the second round of the 2009 draft. Originally a shortstop, he missed a couple of seasons after injuring his thumb sliding into first, strengthening the arguments of baseball curmudgeons the world over. He converted to pitching in 2013, reached the majors two years later, and made an immediate impact, posting a 1.80 ERA and 0.9 WAR in just 22 appearances. Over his first four big league seasons, his 5.1 WAR was 15th among all relievers.

After five seasons with the club, the Orioles traded Givens to the Rockies at the deadline in 2020, starting an annual tradition. The Rockies traded him to the Reds at the deadline in 2021; he signed with the Cubs in ’22, and they traded him to the Mets at that year’s deadline. If Givens pitches well in the first half of 2023 and the Orioles aren’t in contention, at least he’s already racked up enough U-Haul rewards points that he’ll probably get his next move free.

Although he’s no longer a standout, Givens is still a reliable reliever. He’s pitched 456.2 career innings, sixth-most among all relievers since 2015, and the 2019 season is his only one with an ERA over 4.00. Aside from the pandemic-shortened 2020 and his rookie year in ’15, he’s never thrown fewer than 51 innings or made fewer than 54 appearances in a season. Not counting last year, when he missed time due to COVID-19 protocols, Givens has been on the IL just once: a 10-day stint for a lower back strain in 2021. He also had conjunctivitis in 2016, which doesn’t really feel like something we need to know about him, but here we are.

Givens has played in two postseasons. Remember when Buck Showalter left Zach Britton in the bullpen to watch the Orioles lose during the 2016 Wild Card Game, even though Dave Cameron specifically asked him not to? Givens did make it into the game, putting up 2.1 scoreless innings. But Showalter didn’t get so lucky with Givens’ two appearances in the Wild Card Series against the Padres last season. He threw a scoreless inning in a Game 1 loss, then faced three batters in Game 3, striking out the first and allowing a walk and a single. Both runners would score when Showalter, who seemed to have learned his lesson, brought in closer Edwin Díaz to replace Givens.

Over the course of his career, Givens has allowed a wOBA of .329 against lefties, as opposed to .269 against righties, although he posted reverse splits in both 2020 and ’21. He features a three-pitch mix, throwing a four-seamer 51.5% of the time, a slider 29.8% of the time, and a changeup 18.7% of the time. Against lefties, he largely shelves the slider in favor of the changeup. All of his pitches feature a significant amount of gyro spin. His changeup has 52.1% active spin, lowest in the league, and his fastball has 69.2%, also extremely low. Although his slider and change don’t mirror each other perfectly with regard to spin, they do mirror each other by movement.

Givens’ fastball averaged 93.4 mph in 2022. That’s the lowest velocity of his career and a drop of 1.3 mph from 2021. Another big drop would mean leaving the realm of league-average velocity. Although his chase rate is in the eighth percentile, he still posted better-than-average walk, whiff and strikeout rates in 2022. His hard-hit rate climbed to 38%, a jump of more than 10% from 2021, but a career-high 42.8% ground ball rate helped him continue to be effective. Along with his velocity, those are the numbers are the ones to watch in 2023. If his hard-hit rate stays elevated and he can’t keep the ball on the ground, he’ll almost certainly be collecting that $2 million buyout.

The Orioles are an exciting young team, and they’re about to get their first full seasons from Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson. They have a star center fielder in Cedric Mullins and a defensive standout at short in Jorge Mateo. They have prospects like Grayson Rodriguez, DL Hall, and Colton Cowser just over the horizon.

As Dan Szymborski noted after the Jorge López trade, the Orioles’ top-ranked farm system was somewhat light on arms, and they have been aggressive in addressing that weakness. They received four pitchers for López and two more for Trey Mancini, selected Andrew Politi from the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft, and signed relievers Eduard Bazardo, Kyle Dowdy, and Wandisson Charles to minor league deals on Monday. In all, that’s 10 new minor league arms in the past five months, in addition to international free agent signings and the 12 pitchers they selected in the draft.

There has been a distinct pattern to Baltimore’s offseason moves. The O’s signed Kyle Gibson to a one-year deal. They signed Adam Frazier to a one-year deal. They signed Franchy Cordero and Nomar Mazara to minor league contracts. They’re rumored to have interest in Rich Hill, and if that rumor is true, I will give you one guess as to how many years they’re likely to offer the 42-year-old. If you venture over to Baltimore’s Roster Resource page, you’ll see that Givens’ option (or buyout) is the only guaranteed money on the books for 2024.

The Orioles massively outplayed their preseason projections in 2022; projection systems here and elsewhere put their chances of making the playoffs somewhere in between When Pigs Fly and A Snowball’s Chance in Hell. They finished the season with 83 wins, despite a run differential of -14. It would certainly be reasonable to view them as a regression candidate, albeit a young and exciting one. But when the team surpassed all expectations and found itself in the playoff hunt, not only did Mike Elias and company decide against trading for reinforcements, but the front office also dealt away fan favorite Mancini and López at the deadline. Givens is just the latest in a series of stopgap one-year deals indicating that the Orioles don’t see their contention window opening in 2023 either.